README

PHP Antimalware Scanner

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Documentation

Description

PHP Antimalware Scanner is a free tool to scan PHP files and analyze your project to find any malicious code inside it.

It provides an interactive text terminal console interface to scan a file, or all files in a given directory (file paths can also be managed using --filter-paths or --ignore-paths), and find PHP code files that seem to contain malicious code. When a probable malware is detected, will be asked what action to take (like add to the whitelist, delete files, try clean infected code, etc).

The package can also scan the PHP files in a report mode (--report|-r), so without interacting and outputting anything to the terminal console. In that case, the results will be stored in a report file in HTML (default) or text format (--report-format <format>).

This scanner can work on your own php projects and on a lot of other platforms using the right combination of configurations (ex. using --lite|-l flag can help to find less false positivity).

⚠️ Remember that you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from such activities. You are solely responsible for adequate protection and backup of the data before executing the scanner.

How to contribute

Have an idea? Found a bug? Please raise to ISSUES or PULL REQUEST. Contributions are welcome and are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps.

📘 Requirements

• php 7.4+ (PHP 8.x recommended)
  • php-xml
  • php-zip
  • php-mbstring
  • php-json
  • php-common
  • php-curl
  • php-gd

📖 Install

Release

You can use one of these methods to install the scanner by downloading it from GitHub or directly from the console.

Download

Go to the GitHub page and press on the Releases tab or download the raw file from:

Console

1. Run this command from the console (the scanner will be downloaded to your current directory):

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcocesarato/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner/master/dist/scanner

2. Run the scanner:

   php scanner ./dir-to-scan -l ...

3. (Optional) Install as bin command (Unix Bash)

   Run this command:

   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcocesarato/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner/master/dist/scanner -O /usr/bin/awscan.phar && \
   printf '#!/bin/bash\nphp /usr/bin/awscan.phar $@' > /usr/bin/awscan && \
   chmod u+x,g+x /usr/bin/awscan.phar && \
   chmod u+x,g+x /usr/bin/awscan && \
   export PATH=$PATH":/usr/bin"

   Now you can run the scanner simply with this command: awscan ./dir-to-scan -l...

Composer

The package is available on Packagist.

Global Installation (recommended)

For system-wide installation, use:

composer global require marcocesarato/amwscan

After installation, run the scanner using:

php $(composer global config home)/vendor/marcocesarato/amwscan/src/index.php <path-to-scan> [options]

Or create an alias for easier usage:

alias amwscan='php $(composer global config home)/vendor/marcocesarato/amwscan/src/index.php'

Then you can run: amwscan <path-to-scan> [options]

Project-Level Installation

For installing within a specific project:

composer require marcocesarato/amwscan

After installation, run the scanner using:

php vendor/marcocesarato/amwscan/src/index.php <path-to-scan> [options]

Source

Download

Click the GitHub page "Clone or download" or download from:

Git

1. Install git
2. Copy the command and link from below in your terminal: git clone https://github.com/marcocesarato/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner
3. Change directories to the new ~/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner directory: cd ~/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner/
4. To ensure that your master branch is up-to-date, use the pull command: git pull https://github.com/marcocesarato/PHP-Antimalware-Scanner
5. Enjoy

🐳 Docker

1. Download the source
2. Build command docker build --tag amwscan-docker .
3. Run command docker run -it --rm amwscan-docker bash

🧪 Testing

The project includes a comprehensive test suite with unit and integration tests.

Running Tests

# Run all tests
composer test

# Run only unit tests
composer test:unit

# Run only integration tests
composer test:integration

# Generate coverage report
composer test:coverage

Writing Tests

Tests are organized into:

• Unit Tests (tests/Unit/) - Fast, isolated tests for individual classes
• Integration Tests (tests/Integration/) - CLI execution tests with various configurations
• Test Fixtures (tests/Fixtures/) - Sample files for testing (clean, malware, obfuscated)

For detailed information on writing and debugging tests, see TESTING.md.

Continuous Integration

Tests run automatically on pull requests and pushes across multiple PHP versions (7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3).

🔎 Scanning mode

The first think you need to decide is the strength, you need to calibrate your scan to find less false positive as possible during scanning without miss for real malware. For this you can choose the aggression level.

The scanner permit to have some predefined modes:

💻 Usage

Command line

php amwscan ./mywebsite/http/ -l -s --only-exploits
php amwscan -s --max-filesize="5MB"
php amwscan -s -logs="/user/marco/scanner.log"
php amwscan --lite --only-exploits
php amwscan --exploits="double_var2" --functions="eval, str_replace"
php amwscan --ignore-paths="/my/path/*.log,/my/path/*/cache/*"

Doesn't work?

In case above command doesn't work, you can use script responsible for malware scan manually by executing: php dist/scanner <path>

To check all options check the Documentation

Suggestions

If you are running the scanner on a Wordpress project or other popular platform use --only-signatures or --lite flag to have check with less false positive but this could miss some dangerous exploits like nano.

Programmatically

On programmatically silent mode and auto skip are automatically enabled.

use AMWScan\Scanner;

$app = new Scanner();
$report = $app->setPathScan("my/path/to/scan")
              ->enableBackups()
              ->setPathBackups("/my/path/backups")
              ->enableLiteMode()
              ->setAutoClean()
              ->run();

Report Object

object(stdClass) (7) {
  ["scanned"]    => int(0)
  ["detected"]   => int(0)
  ["removed"]    => array(0) {}
  ["ignored"]    => array(0) {}
  ["edited"]     => array(0) {}
  ["quarantine"] => array(0) {}
  ["whitelist"]  => array(0) {}
}

🎨 Screenshots

Report

HTML report format (default)

Interactive CLI